Brazilian men swapped at birth work, live together SAO PAULO – Two years back, Dimas Aliprandi and Elton Plaster didn't know of each other's existence. Then they learned they had been accidentally switched at birth more than 20 years ago.

The discovery didn't bring bitterness or recrimination. Rather, it led to the creation of a bigger family.

Today, the two 25-year-olds are living and working together with both sets of parents growing vegetables and coffee on a small farm in southeastern Brazil.

The chain of events started with Aliprandi, who was always intrigued that he did not resemble the four sisters he grew up with.

"There was something different," he told The Associated Press by phone. "I had blonde hair and blue eyes and my sisters had dark hair and eyes.

"I had the typical features of a descendent of German immigrants, while my sisters and parents were of Italian stock. Something did not add up"...

..."In December 2008, when I was 24, I decided I needed an answer to my doubts and paid 300 reals ($166) for a DNA test that confirmed my suspicions that I was not the birth son of the man and woman who had raised me," he said.

It was a big shock for his parents, Zilda and Antonio Aliprandi. They at first refused to believe the results, but eventually decided to help him look for his biological parents.

The search began at the Madre Regina Protmann Hospital, where he was born... ...But hospital officials were skeptical, he said, and asked him to have another DNA test, which he did three months later...

..."Instead it sparked a desire to join our families," Aliprandi said. "Elton and I wanted to remain with those who raised us and with our birth parents. We wanted to expand our families."

So about a year ago, Aliprandi and the parents who raised him accepted an offer from the Plasters to move to their farm, where they built a home.

"This is the way it should be," Adelson Plaster recently told Globo TV. "We are all together and I now have two sons living and working here."